Shop Project: TS Blade Storage - quick and dirty

[Jim Becker]

Since I appropriated the cabinet that was living under my slider for the sanding station I recently posted about, I needed a new and better way to store my table saw blades. Using the old adage, "to a hammer, everything is a nail", I decided to build a drawer based blade storage unit using my CNC and some 1/2" maple plywood I happened to have available. It was a good exercise in "quick design" and the machine actually had a nice advantage making the blade drawers as you'll see in the photos below. At any rate, It's not pretty; it's not entirely precise, but you know what? It does the job nicely and looks decent enough.

Design is approximately 14" wide by 17" deep by 10" tall and accommodates four 12" blades and four 10" or smaller blades. In retrospect, I should have just cut all of the drawers for 12" blades since that makes size the least common denominator. Maybe next time. LOL

IMG_3058.jpg IMG_3059.jpg IMG_3069.jpg

[Yonak Hawkins]

Great idea, Jim.

[Jim Becker]

Thanks, Yonak. It just seemed to me that simple "tray" type "drawers" that contain the blade makes sense for this kind of storage. I made the recesses relieved and just large enough that one can actually get ahold of the blade without slicing one's fingers to shreds, too.

[Frank Pratt]

Very nice; simple, compact & functional. I'm gonna build me one of those.

[Jim Becker]

For folks who don't have a CNC, the trays can also be made by either laminating two piece of material, one with a hole cut and the other flat or by using a router on a long board with a template. Use what you have to do what you need to do!

[Frank Pratt]

For folks who don't have a CNC

Ya, that would be me. I figured on using 2 layers of 1/4" ply, which would give each "drawer" a finished thickness of a little under 1/2". Lots of blade storage in a low profile cabinet.

[Van Huskey]

Very nice!

I wanna see what you would come up with if you did it slow and clean.

[Jim Dwight]

My storage for table saw blades is a drawer with a dowel sanded undersize protruding from the bottom of the drawer (made thicker for this). I cut spacers out of 1/4 plywood or mdf or waferboard (whatever I had at the time) to separate the blades and just stack them up on the dowel. I can store ten or so in a drawer 3.5 inches deep, depending on the blade thickness and spacer thickness. They can be as thin as 1/8 and the carbide still won't touch. I put my stacked dado on another dowel in the same drawer.

It doesn't protect the blades as well (but I've had no damage) and takes a little bit of effort to get out the blade I want but I like the compact storage.

But I like this idea. Very protective and still not terribly bulky.

[Jim Becker]

Very nice!

I wanna see what you would come up with if you did it slow and clean.

LOL! This was one of those things were I "got the itch" and just decided to do the deed. A short time at the computer to draw some lines and circles, turn them into toolpaths and then a relatively short time cutting everything out fit that need. Let's just say that if I took my time a little more, some of the measurements would have been a little more exact...but the end result would still have been relatively the same.

There's also a bit of "skill building" by getting an idea and quickly operationalizing it for the CNC like this and that's helping me with "real work" in the long run.

[Art Mann]

Jim, you can make trays for odd shaped things like calipers or wrenches by scanning the item on your computer scanner and then vectorizing the outline of the item. A little resizing of the vectors and you are ready to carve. I will try to make a picture and post an example on this thread tomorrow if I remember.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Nicely done Jim!

[Jim Becker]

Jim, you can make trays for odd shaped things like calipers or wrenches by scanning the item on your computer scanner and then vectorizing the outline of the item. A little resizing of the vectors and you are ready to carve. I will try to make a picture and post an example on this thread tomorrow if I remember.

Absolutely true. I haven't found the need for that to-date, but one never knows!

[Art Mann]

Here is an example that turned out to be fairly useful - if ugly. It took very little time.

carve.jpg

[Mike Ontko]

For folks who don't have a CNC, the trays can also be made by either laminating two piece of material, one with a hole cut and the other flat or by using a router on a long board with a template. Use what you have to do what you need to do!

This is one of the items on my growing shop to-do list!

[Kris Cook]

Jim - I like this idea and will be incorporating it into my shop storage planning.

Seems like a 1.5" to 2" hole in the bottom of the drawers would make the blades even easier to remove. No?